Este post también está disponible en: Spanish
A year ago retoNet was born so now is the time to crack open a good bottle of wine.
Over the last twelve months, this site and the decision to keep it alive with worthwhile content has been an arduous task, requiring hours and hours of work, but immensely rewarding.
retoNet has been, for us, the best way to deal with the challenges of multimedia, the evolution of social media and the need to be up to date with the trends of modern journalism.
It also has been a vehicle to get in touch with a great number of hugely talented colleagues and multimedia producers. Without retoNet that would never have happened.
This virtual toast is to all who have been with us throughout 2010, encouraging this project. Cheers!
And to close the year, we have made a list of some of the best audio and video players that we have found along the way: these are 16 technological solutions to embed multimedia content in our websites.
We have used most of them in retoNet and also in projects related to our work.
To upload audio to Internet
There are three really first class audio players: Audioboo, SoundCloud and the WordPress plugin Audio Player. We made these three recommendations in April 2010, but we still think they are some of the most flexible solutions to display audio in our websites.
PowerPress might be one of the best plugins for audio, at least for all WordPress enthusiasts. This plugin has multiple options for customization and brings essential features for podcasting including full iTunes support.
WPAudio deserves a separate mention. It is simple, elegant and effective.
Drewplayer is an mp3 player for those who don’t want to hurt their brain with complicated installations. It also has a WordPress plugin.
Yahoo’s and Google’s audio players work quite well and instructions to implement them are clear on every site.
If you have Javascript skills SoundManager2 is, without doubt, a great resource to explore.
Apple offers an audio format converter (only for Mac). This software can convert more than 20 formats of audio to mp3 or wav formats.
To display video on Internet
Flowplayer is an open source video player. You can use it to embed video streams into your web pages. It is developed by a company located in Helsinki, Finland. Brothers Anssi and Tero Piirainen say that their mission is to develop “the best video player for the web”. It’s worth a look.
Miro : This video player is also an open source project created by Participatory Culture Foundation, a non-profit organization based in Boston, Massachusetts. Miro’s website is full of tips and information about visual production. We refer here, above all, to the excellent -though quite basic- guide on video production: Make Internet TV.
Another option to display videos in the web is to use third party services like YouTube, Vimeo and Blip.tv, to mention those three that we have tried in retoNet. The process is very easy to follow: open an account, upload videos and grab the code to insert it in your website.
These services make quick and easy to upload videos and help discoverability. The downside is that we lose some control in the presentation and traffic.
A good video format converter? No doubts here: it’s Zamzar.
retoNet is multimedia: it is a site to explore new technologies. It is design: a place to create beauty on the web.
SERGIO ACOSTA ~ Web designer and multimedia producer
MIRYAM AUDIFFRED ~ Multimedia producer and voice over artist